


How Stubborn Is The Love In A Haunted House

by theweddingofthefoxes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Past Lives, does it count as mcd if characters are ghosts to begin with? eh, ghostly possession, ghostly sex scenes, ghostly spooky hauntings!, shameless self insert fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 10:59:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweddingofthefoxes/pseuds/theweddingofthefoxes
Summary: Hux doesn't even want to consider the possibility that he and his weird, new-agey roommate Ren have moved into a haunted house. But when the two of them discover evidence of the home's previous residents, it seems like the house has not only got its traditional spirits, but that Hux himself might be haunting a place he's already been.





	How Stubborn Is The Love In A Haunted House

**Author's Note:**

> Please take this incredibly indulgent self-insert fic for what it is--a fun little project I worked on while trying not to lose my mind working on grad school. I don't claim to have any expertise on spiritualism, WWII, past life regression, or what kind of sex you could potentially have with a ghost. 
> 
> Aula is my self-insert character, and Sylen is that of a friend's. I wrote about a zillion 'AUs' involving these friends, but this is the first one I published. Whoa man!

This stupid thing was all Ren's fault.

Well, maybe it was partially his own fault for getting the ball rolling. Hux had mentioned, when Ren had moved in a month after he did, that he had noticed some odd things happening around the house. "It's old, and drafty, and noisy" Hux had said when he was helping the goddamned weirdo move in. Maybe part of him was half-heartedly hoping that Ren would change his mind and leave. "My windows and doors are always getting blown open. I hear the pipes knocking around all the time, too."

Ren just offered him a cryptic smile. "Old houses are like that. Full of things."

What a pain in the ass. This mystic weirdo that Hux had picked up, almost in a panic, on Craiglist, because he had found this huge sprawling farmhouse for rent, cheap, and he just needed someone to live with him to make it affordable. He'd brought all these like, rocks with him, colorful ones that weren't supposed to touch each other or else they'd get messed up somehow. He'd brought books by Anne Rice and drugs, probably.

But to Hux's surprise, for the most part, Ren was an ideal housemate. He wasn't the neatest person ever--that spot belonged to Hux--but he knew how to keep his mess isolated to his own room and keep the common space tidy. He paid everything in cash and on time, and if he was smoking pot, he did it outside where it wouldn't bother Hux. He got along nicely with Hux's cat and fed her and gave her fresh water and threw around the little catnip mouse for her if Hux was working late. They kept different hours so they rarely ran into one another, and they had separate bathrooms. It came as a surprise to Ren when Hux knocked on his door one Saturday morning, annoyed.

"Yeah? Come in."

It was eleven am but Ren was still in bed, groggily shielding his eyes when Hux flipped on the light switch and stepped into the room around piles of laundry.

"Look, if you're nervous about something or upset or whatever, take it outside next time, okay? I couldn't sleep from all the--"

"Wait, wait. What?"

"I heard you pacing all night, and I--"

"You know I got home like, four hours ago, right?"

"What?"

"I told you this," Ren said, like a teenager repeating something to his parents in exasperation. "A friend of mine was playing a show last night and then we went out the bars. I got dropped off at like, six am and crashed. I haven't been here. You can look at my Snapchat if you don't believe me."

The wheels in Hux's head were grinding hard, trying to come up with a solution.

"Sorry," he finally said. "It must have been those fucking pipes. I'll see if I can call someone and find out what to do."

Ren shifted in bed, sat up, his eyes bright and focused now. "You and I both know that isn't it."

Hux stifled a groan. "Okay. I'll bite. I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're talking about ghosts."

"I knew from the moment I entered the house that--"

"Ren, look around! This is a farmhouse that was built before Prohibition, it looks like it was designed for a horror movie! Of course you'd think that by coming in here."

"I have felt," Ren announced, untroubled by Hux's frustration, "At least two different presences. Both are female."

"Did you learn that from playing with your rock collection?" Hux couldn't help but snap.

"You're so closed off, an entity could show up right now and you'd be in blatant denial," Ren answered, now sounding only a little miffed. "Look, I bet there's still stuff belonging to the previous families here somewhere. Did you look in the attic or the basement at all before I moved in?"

"The basement was cleared out by the last tenant. It's pretty small, too. I have a few boxes stored down there, but otherwise it's empty. The attic, I've never touched."

"Let's start there, then."

 

 

Hux doubted that anyone had been up here in years. The previous owner of the room had given him the attic key along with all the rest but it had jammed in the lock and he'd had to shoulder it open, wincing as he stumbled into a cloud of dust within. His shoes--and Ren's bare feet--left prints as clear as footsteps in freshly fallen snow against the dusty floor. "Hope you don't have asthma," he told Ren.

Dusty and untouched, yes, but at least it was organized. The boxes and suitcases were neatly stacked up in rows, so many of them that they both paused, unsure of where to start. "Whatever's closest, I guess," Ren said. He helped himself to a large leather suitcase, and Hux chose the newest, cleanest-looking cardboard box that someone had clearly transferred very old photos and documents into within the past few years.

On the very of top of the pile was a paperback book. A copy of The Great Gatsby--an original edition. Hux's hands trembled as he opened the cover and flipped gingerly through the pages, stopping short when he saw the signature on the title page. "Holy fuck," he said, showing it with as much care as he could muster to Ren. "Look at this! Do you realize how much this could be worth? If we sell it--"

"No!" Ren managed to snatch the book out of Hux's hand without harming it. "It's hers."

"It's--who? You've got to be kidding, Ren, _we_ found it--"

"No, no, no, you'll upset her--"

Hux rolled his eyes, mostly seething. What an idiot! They could probably buy this house, and all the land with it, with the money that would bring in. But part of him toke notice of how visceral Ren's reaction had been. He seemed genuinely afraid that he might upset--someone. He was probably nuts, but he wasn't faking it. Ren really seemed to think removing the book would be a problem.

"You're pathetic," Hux said. But he did not insist. He just sighed and said, "I'll put it back with the rest of these things when I'm done."

He continued working his way through the box. A number of journals, detailing what appeared to be recipes, all written in the same distinctive hand, but as he looked through them he realized they were spells. _First Ren and now this. I can't get the fuck away from all this magical bullshit._

Newspaper and magazine clippings, quite a few of them, all from the 20's, describing the exploits of the same medium. Sylen. They mostly amounted to the same story, told different ways and regarding different stunts. Sylen would hold a seance, a debunker would come in to try and prove she was faking it, and the debunker would be left foiled, unable to explain away her knowledge or demonstrations with the usual laundry list of parlor tricks. At one point, even Harry Houdini's wife attended a session of hers and was left baffled.

The pressure to expose her as a fake seemed to grow more powerful as time went on, Hux thought as he rifled through the clippings. It was salt in the wound that she was young and beautiful and poised, every photo of her--whether posed or candid--full of a dark, mischievous loveliness. Here she was looking deadpan at the camera, eyes ringed in a thick layer of kohl, a cigarette burning between her fingers. Here she was meeting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as he signed for her a copy of _The Coming of the Fairies_ (according to the photo caption). Here she was, blurred but still striking, seeming to conjure up some shifting beam of light that the slow exposure of the newspaper's camera had not fully been able to capture.

Hux glanced at a fragment from an interview she had taken part in for a ladies magazine in 1928.  
__

_-What do you still hope to achieve? In the course of your career, you have already done so much._

_-That's very kind of you to say, though I do not think of what I do as a 'career'--you know, in the sense of a nurse or a schoolmistress or any occupation in which a woman can come home and shed that mantle. I will always be what I am, no matter where I go, without any sort of choice except whether or not to invite the public to see what I can show them._

_That being said, I wish to go even further in my talents, further than any who have come before me. It is foolishness, of course, to believe one can bring back the dead in the sense of Mary Shelley's Adam, but to coax back a soul from beyond--now that would be extraordinary._

_-Many would say this is an affront to God._

_-And war isn't? The widows I have met, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. The women whose husbands and lovers did not return from France, or Italy, or Germany--is the fact they will die in torturous unhappiness not an affront to God, when they stood before His altar and promised to love him for all time? To return the happiness to these women, I see it as no less than divine._

_-What sort of husband will you have, when the time comes?_

_-Oh, gracious, not the common sort of man, the kind who is always looking to correct a woman, disprove her, take credit for her achievements. Perhaps that's simply been my own experience because of who I am...but I would be willing to wait a very long time for the right sort. One whose interests line up just so with mine, perhaps even one whose skills are comparable with my own--one with whom I could enter a real partnership. I fear I couldn't love any other sort. I would happily wait forever._

_-Into your old age, you mean?_

_-Oh, far longer._

Hux frowned at that last line. He allowed himself to wonder how many times this Sylen had reread The Great Gatsby as she waited, patiently, in this very house.

But had she been for real? She seemed to believe it--or at least, could act the part of her persona well enough to become a sort of celebrity, the kind who authors signed things for (the signed copy of the Doyle book was at the bottom of that box), the kind who was photographed and interviewed on a regular basis, the kind who relished proving her haters wrong. The spellbooks....she must have believed she had some sort of power. Had she managed to accomplish her goal? What did it mean, exactly, to 'coax a soul back from beyond'? Whatever it had meant, it seemed that she hadn't succeeded. The following clippings were about her death, not six months after the date of that interview. The hotel she was staying in, in New York City, had caught on fire, and she had been on the top floor with no way out. It had made headline news, the story of her life and death still getting constant attention, at least until the stock market crashed and made everything else seem unimportant.

She hadn't succeeded, had she? He shivered, thinking about the hours of pacing he'd listened to the night before.

Before he could wonder much further about it, Ren was tapping his shoulder. "You need to look at this. You're not going to believe it."

"What is it?"

Ren handed him a stack of photos that he had retrieved from the leather suitcase. "Notice anything about this?"

The suitcase must have been from a different era of occupants, perhaps ten or fifteen years after Sylen's time. The top photo was dated 1939, and showed a man and a woman standing on the back porch of this very house--even in black and white, it was clear that the sunlight was bright. A couple, clearly. The wife seemed a bit younger, perhaps in her early twenties, her arms wrapped around her husband's waist in an adoring embrace, grinning. And the husband....

Hux furrowed his brow, looking at the photo. The man looked eerily similar to--to him. The same nose and cheeks, the same face shape, and if the railing of the porch was the same size then as it was now, then they were about the same height, about six inches taller than the woman. The man was not smiling but he seemed relaxed, content, his head tilted down to be closer to her, his arm snug around her shoulder.

"Does he not look exactly like you?" Ren asked.

"It's probably just the angle in this photo, but it's a bit uncanny, yeah," Hux admitted. Ren looked impatient.

"It's more than that. You have to keep looking at these photos."

Again, Hux rolled his eyes, but he continued flipping through the pile.

Ren...wasn't joking. Hux felt a weird nervousness in his stomach as he looked at photo after photo taken of this couple--at various family events, it seemed, at parties, at the weddings of friends, playing with children (though it did not appear that they'd had any of their own, these were rentals belonging to siblings or neighbors, maybe)--and in every picture, at every imaginable angle, the man looked just like him. The only color photo was from their wedding, clearly something they had sprung for, special, and it took Hux's breath away. In the other pictures, it was clear the man had light-colored hair and pale eyes, but this color photo confirmed that he had the exact same red hair and blue-green eyes that he did.

"Oh my God," was all he could say.

"He was a general in the army," Ren said. "He was stationed in France."

"Do you know that for real, or is this just a projection from the astral plane?"

"I've got a stack of about a billion of his love letters to her, you smartass," Ren growled. "You can read them for yourself."

Hux leaned over the suitcase, selected a letter at random.

_  
Aula,_

_My French is slowly getting better, though the locals still try to hide their laughter when I make an attempt to speak it. It's only fair, even I think I'd laugh if I heard myself on tape or something like that, or I would if I weren't so frustrated. I won't be leaving anytime soon, though, so I'll have to persist. Better to learn French now than German later._

_I know you love the house with all your heart, and maybe I'll be sick of this goddamned country by the time the war ends, but part of me wants to buy land out here, in a place that hasn't been touched--there are a few, though they're rare--and stay. When you happen upon some unspoiled land, it's like nothing that you can describe. By then, I could be fluent, and I'd teach you until you were too. Even our names sound French, we would fit right in. We could summer in England, if England's not wiped off the map by then, or Greece, or Italy. Anywhere you liked._

_This is only an idea, of course, but I'd love to know how you feel. Maybe you want to stay in the farmhouse for always, and if so, we'll stay there for always._

_I hope you haven't gotten tired of hearing me tell you that I miss you, in every letter._

_Tell me everything, even if you think it's dull. It never is._

_All my love,_

_-A  
_

Hux read it twice. The tight, neat handwriting was uncomfortably similar to his, too.

"I wonder if they made it," he said.

"They didn't," Ren said sadly, and the feeling of being punched in the gut was much more powerful than Hux expected. "I found letters from her sister, consoling her--he must have been killed in action."

Suddenly the attic was stiflingly hot, stuffy, dusty. "Let's put this back," he decided, standing up so suddenly he felt light-headed. "Did you find out what you needed?"

"I'm going to go through more of this. What did you find?"

"A famous medium lived--why am I telling you this? Use your psychic powers and ask her. Or look through here." Hux slid the cardboard box full of Sylen's clippings over to Ren. "I'm going downstairs."

"I might be awhile." Ren was already elbow-deep in Sylen's things, smiling as he opened the spellbook. "Oh, yeah. I'll definitely be awhile."

Hux shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I guess I'll order a pizza or something. Do you want anything?"

Ren was already absorbed, chewing on an errant lock of hair. "I'll eat whatever. There's a ten on my desk you can pay yourself back with. Just put it in the fridge for me."

Hux nodded, watched him skim the journal. He likes what he sees, whatever it is. When he was sure Ren wasn't looking, he selected a few of the most striking photos from the pile of Aula and her husband, and headed back down the stairs into the hallway where he could examine them in better light.

 

 

Hux was determined to not let this weird little history project take over his entire Saturday. After he came down from the attic, he neatly tucked the stolen photographs under a book on his bedside table, then left, closing the door behind him, determined to make the most of the day. He ordered his pizza. He wiped down everything in the bathroom until it was spotless. When the bathroom door creaked open, unbidden, he secured it shut again. He ate his lunch, leaving half for Ren, then left to buy groceries and pick up a new pair of reading glasses--he'd somehow lost the old ones in the course of the move.

He poked around upon his return, looking for Ren. The pizza was still uneaten in the refrigerator. An uncomfortable chill went through him.

He walked back up into the attic, rapped on the door. "Are you still up here? It's been almost three hours."

Silence.

"Ren?" He opened the door.

Ren was sitting almost exactly where Hux had left him late that morning, cross-legged, the soles of his feet caked in dust, the bottom of his sweatpants too, silent, unmoving. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, or maybe focused on something entirely invisible (the way Mill did almost every night before Hux went to sleep as she stood on the edge of his bed, tracking something unseen, her pupils huge). He was slowly tilting his head, almost like someone was gently lifting his chin, his body limp and willing, and it was too freaky for Hux to stand. "Hey!" he shouted. "What's your problem?"

That got his attention. He blinked, his eyes and posture back to normal, turned to look at Hux. "You're interrupting," he grouched as his gaze snapped back into focus.

"You've been here for almost three hours," Hux repeated. "What the hell have you been up to?"

"Establishing contact."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. If you don't come down and eat lunch I'm throwing it in the fucking garbage."

"Thanks, Dad," Ren said. "I was listening, for your information. When the house is quiet and I can concentrate--I can hear them. Faintly. But I can hear them. Sylen....she expressed that they want to communicate with us. We should--try and summon them."

"That sounds like what white people in horror movies say right before they die."

"They're not dangerous," Ren insisted. "They just want to get through somehow. If we let them." He looked hard at Hux. "Tomorrow night. We'll try and contact them. Ask them some questions." He paused. "I'm telling you now, explicitly, I'll be out late again tonight. If you haven't set a 10 pm curfew for me, that is."

"I think I'll just lock you out instead. Sleep on the porch for all I care."

"Anyway, anything you hear, it's not me. Watch me drive away and then tell yourself anything you hear has a reasonable explanation." He stood up, wincing, his joints audibly popping. "Okay. Let's go."

Hux wondered how he hadn't already shot down this plan already as they headed back downstairs. At best, trying to establish contact with ghosts was pointless. At worst, it'd make him jump at every shadow for the rest of the week because the pipes decided to rattle and scare the shit out of him at a conveniently spooky moment.

He couldn't help but wonder what they might want to tell him, though.

 _Seriously? Don't be a fucking moron. You're just doing it to keep Ren from being insufferable, and it's not like you have anything else going on on a Sunday night anyway._

Hux settled in front of the TV, the cat in his lap and a beer in his hand, content.

 

Ren made a beeline for his shower as soon as he came back downstairs. His whole body ached from sitting on the hard attic floor, from crouching over the suitcases and boxes, from keeping so still for so long. His hands and feet were nearly black with dust and the stuffiness of the room had made him sweat. If he got in the shower now, he could take a good long one and still have plenty of time to get dressed and make the drive out to the movie theater. 

He was almost fully undressed when he froze, the hair standing up on his arms.Someone is here--"Hello?" he asked, softly, so Hux wouldn't think he was calling him from down the hall.

A breath of silence, then another, then the water suddenly turned on and Ren nearly lost his balance as he recoiled, his heart pounded. He held onto the sink, panting, watching the the hot water begin to steam up the mirror. Go on, get in, was the clear invitation. His nerves were still jangling, but he couldn't help but smile. He finished undressing and got in.

At first, his vigilance was still on high, his ears straining for any odd sound, half expecting the curtain to be torn open by some invisible force or a female voice to call his name. But nothing like that happened, and before long, his eyes were closed as he felt himself melting into the water that was just the degree of heat that he liked. 

_Does she know? Has she watched this before, seen how I...?_

"Hello," he said, again, but not as a question. "Who's with me?" He suspected he knew the answer, though. The adoring wife of Hux's spot-on doppelganger would not turn around and pursue him into the shower; it had to be Sylen. Something warm and comfortable threaded its way up through his body along with the sensation of the hot water. He felt highly aware, a little nervous, but not afraid. Perhaps just anticipatory. He thought about the juicier bits of Sylen's spellbooks, the journals she had so meticulously kept. She had not simply written spells down; instead, she tinkered with them, recorded her results with the painstaking regularity of a lab scientist. She had simple ones, ones for plants to grow and for a boost of luck, for protection against negative energies; but he had been--he couldn't deny it--more interested in her recipes for lust, for sexual attraction, for 'orgasmic dreams'. He'd taken a photo on his cell phone of that page for later reference. 

"Are you keeping me company?" he asked, lower, amused, almost flirtacious. The warmth on his skin grew even warmer, friendlier, running his hands down his arms, his sides, felt suddenly thrilling. Like someone else was touching him. "Oh," he said. "Oh, okay, yes."

He reached down lower, along his stomach, half-teasing himself, half-teasing her. She was there, he felt her, same as you'd feel eyes on you when a stranger was staring on a train or at a restaurant. "Like this?" he asked softly, finally brushing against his cock, resting his damp mane of hair against the tiled wall. "Is this what you want to see--oh--"

His willingness to show off was worth rewarding, it seemed. The heat upon him flared, and it was as though inch of his skin had become an erogenous zone, and the water pouring on him was almost too much to bear. He groaned, gritting his teeth, let the sensation flood through him, felt the ache of his muscles unclench and fade even as his still-stiffening cock ached even harder. 

"God," he muttered, "Please, this is--thank you--oh my god, it's so good--"

He wasn't even touching himself when he came. He gasped, nearly inhaled water, let out a combined sputter and moan, roughly running his hands all over himself now, wringing out every last bit of the heat and sensitivity, biting his lower lip. He wondered if this was his reward for rescuing her book from Hux. 

When Ren stopped panting, when he managed to stand up straight again and collect his thoughts, the water stopped all at once and he was left shivering. "Don't be like that," he said. "I'll get cold." He'd only been playing around, but again he jumped when he heard a soft thud from outside the shower. He poked his head out from behind the curtain and saw the the towel lying on the floor for him, the one that had been folded and sitting secure on its shelf just moments earlier. The biggest, softest one he owned. He scooped it up and stepped out, stared at the fogged-up mirror that now had words drawn in the condensation.

ABC YES NO GOODBYE  
TOMORROW NIGHT

 

Ren left around six, telling Hux yet again he'd be out late. Hux just yawned and changed the channel, pulled the flannel blanket over himself as he watched the sun go down, let reruns go by as he browsed Twitter and stroked Millie. 

The stairs creaked from around the corner. A door shut with a loud click and Hux sat up, sending Millie hopping out of his lap to investigate. She peered around the corner, then bolted. _Cats do that all the time. Calm yourself._

He headed up to his room, planning on going right to bed. But the papers on his bedside table immediately caught his eye, ones he certainly hadn't put there. They were tucked under the same book he'd used to secure the photos of Aula and her husband--more of his love letters to her. Goddammit, Ren must have stuck them there, thinking he'd want some reading material to convince him--Hux froze when he realized something. 

The only time Ren would have had an opportunity to put anything in his room would have been while Hux was out running errands. When he had gone back into the attic to find him, there had been both of their footsteps leading in, and his own shoeprints leading out, but no bare footprints going back towards the door--that was how Hux had known he'd been there that whole time, meditating with his ghosts. They'd gone back downstairs together and Ren had immediately gone to spend about an hour in the shower before getting dressed and leaving for his movie. So how...?

He picked up one of the letters and began reading.

_  
Aula,_

_I made the mistake of not reading your last letter in private, you dirty girl. After skimming it, I realized what sort of game you were playing, and I had to fold it up and save it for later as casually as possible. The day dragged on, but I finally got to read it in peace. You make me thankful for my rank; a general gets more privacy than a private does. I read it over and over and wanted you more each time. I imagined you doing all the things you described. I could hear your voice asking me if I was pleased. More than I can say. I would save this letter from a fire._

_I wonder if you remember the time, maybe two or three months before I left, after your sister's birthday party. You slept in the car on the way home and I thought I would put you to bed, but when we went upstairs you pulled me close and kissed me and you moaned into my mouth while you did it and that was all it took. I never thought I would want you under me as badly as I did that night but now every night I'm away I want you more. When I'm jittery and can't sleep, I imagine the sound of you saying my name while we fuck, the sounds you make when I touch your breasts, like it's a new sensation every time. The sound of you pleading with me to be rougher. When I'm too tired to do anything but miss you, I think of how you look afterwards, asking me in your sleepy voice if you made me happy. You always do, Aula._

_-A_

 

Hux set the letter aside, unable to ignore how aroused he had been reading it. He could so vividly imagine this man yanking aside the skirt of her party dress as they lay in bed together that night he described, could hear her quick noisy breaths, her voice asking him for more, calling him honey. The letters hadn't mentioned that, had they? They must have, they were so detailed. So--descriptive. 

He climbed into bed, hoped to fall asleep right away but he was too restless for that. He turned on the bedside lamp and reached for the stack of photos again, took a long look at the one on top. Maybe it had been taken the very night that had been described in the letter--the pair of them had certainly been at some kind of party. She was sitting in his lap, holding a glass of champagne, and the photographer had caught him in motion, kissing her cheek. Even blurry, the face was unmistakably similar to his. Hux wasn't sure his own friends or family would be able to tell it wasn't him. Her face was so sweet, so friendly, so pretty, shining with happiness through the photo. 

Hux suddenly wanted, very badly, to know what she had written in the letter that had driven her husband mad. Just for fun, he imagined her kissing him, asking if she had pleased him--Hux snatched at the switch of the bedside lamp. In the dark, he let his fantasy grow more detailed. She'd writhe under him as he kissed her neck, she'd gasp out his name, she'd smile shyly at him as she knelt in front of him--

He came hard and suddenly, ground himself against the mattress. A wave of sleepiness overtook him, and he rolled onto his side, wrapping his arms around a pillow, and the sound of the floor creaking beside him did not even phase him as he faded into the dark. 

 

 

Hux was in no hurry to get out of bed the following morning. The temperature had dipped overnight and rain was pattering against the windows, filling the room with only the dimmest grey light. He glanced at the clock--8:10. He'd planned to go for a run today, early, but there was no way that was happening now. Hux pulled the blankets more securely around himself and closed his eyes again, settling into the burrow of warmth he'd created.

It was so nice to not have to get up--he'd just sleep a little while longer, it was Sunday, after all--he started falling into a pleasant drowse, as though someone were gently stroking his hair which had always made him sleepy ever since he was a child. His breathing slowed and he lay like that for a long time, content, almost like there was a warm soft breath on his neck--

Something crashed down the hall and Hux sat straight up with a gasp. Before he could worry about what it was or what had caused it, Ren barged into his room, pleased with himself.

"Found it!" he announced, holding out a long, flat box.

"Was that you, just now?"

"Yeah," Ren admitted. "I had to sort through some boxes I hadn't unpacked yet to find the board, but I found it."

Inwardly, Hux was pleased that Ren had so readily admitted to making the noise instead of just trying to pass it off on ghosts; outwardly, he scowled. "Learn to sort more quietly, then. I was asleep." He glanced at the box. "Is that Parker Brothers?"

"I've had this one since I was a kid," Ren huffed. "I'm familiar with it. Leave the brand names out of it. The point is that it does its job."

Hux had to admit the whole setup did look pretty professional when he came downstairs that night to play this game with Ren. Nice white candles as tall and thick as soup cans, the board placed exactly in the center of the table upon a nice tablecloth Hux suspected was stolen from Ren's mother, the rain outside still pouring as if for ambiance. It didn't stop him from being certain Ren would cheat the entire time and move the planchette himself. They sat in silence, put their fingers as lightly as possible on the planchette, so lightly that the slightest tremor of their hands would lift their fingers entirely.

"Okay," Ren began, speaking loudly and clearly as if addressing someone who was hard of hearing. "Is anyone here? We're here, waiting to speak with you."

Three seconds pause, then the planchette glided over towards the word YES.

"Stop doing that," Hux said immediately.

"It isn't me!" Ren protested. "Look--look how light my hand is. It isn't me."

Hux rolled his eyes.

"Who's with us?"

Ren made a show of how little pressure he was applying, letting his hand tremble with the exertion of just barely touching. The planchette glided forward once again. SYLEN.

"Are you sure you're not--"

"Here." Ren removed his hand from the planchette entirely, challenging him with a look. "I'll keep my hand off it for the next couple questions and you'll see."

"Fine." Hux sat, waiting, but nothing happened. The planchette sat on the N, motionless. Ren snorted.

"You're the one being guided. You have to be the one to ask a question."

Hux thought for a moment, then said, in the same clear and loud voice Ren had used, "Is Aula there?"

The planchette glided under his hand and he recoiled, drew his hand back like he'd brushed a hot stove. "What the fuck?" he demanded.

"Put your hand back. Right now." Ren's eyes were greedy, he could tell he had broken through one of Hux's barriers, absolutely did not want this to stop.

The planchette had moved to NO before Hux had moved away. He set his fingers on it again--even more gingerly, if that was possible--and asked, "Why isn't she?" Hux asked.

Again, it glided with him not moving it, only feeling it pull him, swiftly and decisively. SAD.

"Sad? Did you make her sad?"

"Jesus, Ren, I didn't--"

Ren returned his hand to the planchette the way he might have snatched a phone from Hux's hand, to speak to the offended party directly. "What did he do to make her sad?"

"Can you not accuse me of--?"

The planchette spelled out HE DOESN'T REMEMBER HER

"Ren," Hux said quietly, as if nervous that the ghosts would overhear. "I think she has me mistaken for someone else."

"Does she?" Ren asked.

He thought about the desperate way he had thought about her the night before, how vividly he had imagined her, just pieced those fantasies together from the photos and letters. He thought about the uncanny similarity of the photos of the man to him--

"Hux, have you ever thought about past lives?"

"No. Never."

"Who says you weren't here in a past life--lived here with this Aula, and then died in France but found your way back here?"

"That would involve an awful lot of coincidences," Hux growled.

"And the fact that every one of those pictures looks just like you, and that the handwriting is identical, and the fact you happened to end up here in this house with all this stuff isn't really, really coincidental?"

There was a moment of quiet as Hux puzzled that out.

"Sylen," he finally said. "Is there any way to prove this?"

The planchette glided to YES, then spelled out REN CAN MAKE YOU REMEMBER

"What?" Hux asked out loud.

Ren looked nervous, accused. "I think....that's sort of a tall order. I know in theory how to do a past-life regression on--"

"What the fuck? No, you're no doing anything on me--"

"It's not dangerous!"

"You just said you'd never done it--"

"Yeah, and it involves getting someone relaxed enough to tap into their past life memories and I don't know if I can do that to you _because you never relax."_

Hux removed his hand from the planchette and rubbed his forehead wearily. "You can try it on me sometime," he said begrudgingly. "At worst I'll get a nap out of it." He set his hand back down again and it began to move once more.

I CAN HELP HIM

"Thank you," Ren said. "Are you....are you still learning more things? Did you keep learning new abilities after you died?"

YES

"Did you figure out how to call a soul back?" Hux asked.

YOURS

Ren stared at him, awestruck. "Yours. You! She brought you back!"

"Ren, I don't--"

"She kept learning, even after she died, who knows how much she knows now! She can bring back a soul, she brought yours back--and now you're here! Sylen, is that what happened?"

YES

"See?" He grinned triumphantly. "Sylen, will you show me--some of what you know, now?"

It was impossible to tell just by the movement of the planchette, but Hux could have sworn that the response was a flirtatious one.

IF YOU BEHAVE FOR ME

 

 

This was so, so stupid. How on earth did Ren constantly talk him into these things? First the attic and then the seance (which had disturbed him more than Hux cared to admit, particularly the way Sylen had seemingly derailed things in order to hit on Ren, who hadn't minded one bit) and now this.

He also didn't want to acknowledge his disappointment that Aula hadn't been there.

"Just lie down in a spot you know you'll be comfortable in for awhile," Ren instructed. Hux awkwardly shifted on the couch, suddenly not sure what was comfortable. "And close your eyes."

He'd already given permission for Ren to touch him--lightly, he promised. "This is way more mental than physical, anyway," Ren said.

"Therapists do this all the time."

"And I'm sure you have your license to practice therapy."

"Don't say anything unless you feel discomfort or distress, at least for right now. I'll stop the session right away, if that's an issue."

Hux snorted but said nothing.

"Just do whatever feels natural while I'm doing this. If you feel like you're falling asleep, that's fine, don't try and wake up."

At first, there was only the ambient quiet of the room, the faint creaking of the house around him in the dark under his eyelids. When was the last time he had taken a few minutes to just relax with no other purpose in mind? It was nice enough that he didn't mind the feather-faint touch of Ren's hands against his ankles, his shins, his sides, up to his shoulders. He vaguely wondered what all that was about, but felt too content to break himself out of it. The way he'd felt earlier, snug in bed, with the rain pouring on the windows. With the softest hand threading through his hair...

He heard Ren moving around, as if at a distance, heard him softly say, "Help me." This was not the plea of someone in danger but a gentler request, asking for guidance. "You said you would. Please, help me do this right."

The energy of the air changed slightly, softened, and Hux felt himself sinking slowly, his breathing hitching just for a second in surprise before settling down again into calm acceptance. He could feel Ren sitting nearby, watching, but it didn't feel predatory or frightening, simply curious.

"Okay," Ren said to him, in a very similar voice to the one he'd used during the seance. "I can tell you're relaxed, which is great. Now you'll be more open to making your way back into the last place your soul was. It remembers, you know. You remember. Your soul takes those things with it. Take your time. Tell me anything you can remember."

For a moment, all was blank, but then images seemed to shimmer into focus under Hux's closed eyes and he paused to take them in. "Here," he said hoarsely. "I was here. In this house."

"Tell me more about what you're seeing," Ren urged, calmly but firmly. "Tell me what you remember about this house."

He could feel the slight brush of another presence--the one that he'd felt in the house before, the one that he and Aula would sometimes tell each other they'd seen or felt--the good spirit of the house--Sylen--Sylen was helping Ren, helping him....the trickle of memories, like water on the ground, rose around his ankles, became a stream.

"I bought it for my wife after my promotion, just before we got married," Hux answered. "It was famous, locally, because there had been so many seances here about ten years before by a famous medium. She sold it and moved to New York City not long before she died and the man she sold it to sold it to me. Aula loved it..."

He trailed off, uncertain.

"What did she love about it?" Ren asked.

"She loved the porch," Hux said, seeing it as it was, remembering. "She loved how wide it was, how it she could lean on the railing and watch the sky. A stray cat climbed underneath and had kittens and I brought her a lantern so she could check on them at night, and she left the mother food every day. She loved that our room faced the dogwoods out back--there were dogwoods then--and she could see them blooming. And she loved that it had a ghost. She was always fascinated by that sort of thing, had listened to Sylen's radio interviews as a girl. It was a dream come true." He paused. "When I told her I bought it for her she said she'd never want to live anywhere else."

"Tell me more about her," Ren said. "Anything you can recall."

"We married in 1938," he answered. "We had two and a half years before I had to leave. She was so worried...she didn't want me to know how afraid she was...it was like she knew what would happen. I found her in the bathroom, crying hysterically, the day before I left. She was inconsolable. I didn't know what to tell her. I held her until she quieted against me. We had always joked about the good spirit in the house, the medium, the protectress. She was fond of us. She found things we had lost. She left us gifts. Please, I asked the ghost. Please take care of her while I'm gone.

"That night, she was so tender. She asked me over and over if I'd write and I promised I would, and then I laid her down and promised to memorize her so I could take that image with me when I left, and after I was done, she asked if she'd made me happy and I could hardly speak because of course she had."

"I thought of her all the time. I thought about how she looked asleep, how she leaned on me when her feet were tired at a party. I thought about how pleased she'd look with herself when she surprised me in bed by suddenly being bold every now and then. I thought about all the promises I made her while I was gone. I wanted to buy her a house in the French countryside, we could summer there, maybe. After we had won, I'd come and tell her in person how much I had thought of her. I'd take her for a walk down to the lake if I came back in the summer, or through the woods if it were fall, all the places I'd missed. I'd kiss her in the grass and when I couldn't stand it anymore I'd pull her back inside and have her, every inch of her...

"I didn't keep any of those promises, though," he went on, and his voice was shaking, and Ren tensed, concerned. "I couldn't even keep my promise to come back. It took them more than a week to tell her. My letters were often delayed and she had no idea something was wrong...she kept writing as if everything was normal until she was told. The one she wrote that morning is somewhere in the attic, in pieces. She was leaving to send it when they came."

"What if you could talk to her now?" Ren asked, softer. "What would you tell her?"

Hux's jaw clenched but there was no stopping his furious tears. "Oh, god," he said. "I'd tell her how sorry I was. Sylen warned me--she came looking for me, and I knew it was her. She told me she would bring me back to Aula. She had taught herself how. But she said she didn't know what I would lose along the way. That I might forget everything, and have to re-learn it. But she swore I would find my way back to Aula. And she was right, on both counts. I forgot her, after she waited years and years. She saw me come back and I must have looked right through her. I would ask her if she still loves me, after I disappointed her so badly, but I don't know if I want to know the answer."

There was a moment of quiet. Ren had gone silent to mentally consult Sylen, then spoke again.

"I'm going to take you out of this session now, very slowly. You are not going to forget again, but you're not going to wake up again right away. This is probably pretty exhausting and you're just going to nap it out for awhile. You'll remember this when you wake but you'll be calmer and better rested."

Hux felt himself begin to relax again, the tears still rolling down his face into the couch cushions.

"Let go of the frightening parts," Ren went on. "Sylen says she won't let you remember dying. Just focus on the good things for right now. You'll remember being here in this house with Aula when you wake up. How happy you were. You'll know how to look for her and how to talk to her."

Vaguely, as if from a distance, he heard Ren get up and find a blanket from the hall closet, then felt it get tossed over him before Ren retreated upstairs to commune further with Sylen. He felt that sinking sensation again, the darkness slowly, blissfully closing on him, and the feeling of the hand in his hair again, a warm presence curling up next to him, embracing him.

 _I love you,_ the presence promised. _I love you, I love you. Please don't cry. I'm here, I love you..._

 

 

Hux woke up, stiff and disoriented, on the sofa as the blue light of dawn began to creep in through the windows. How long had he been asleep? If he'd been there since Ren had put him into that weird trance at like, 9 pm, it had been about nine hours. Everything was entirely silent. Ren would no doubt continue to sleep for hours. The house was all his for now.

The memories that he had unlocked during the session came flooding back and he threw the flannel blanket off him, moved with his normal intense, quick purpose into the dining room, found the old Parker Brothers ouija board that they'd used packed up in its box under a pile of coupons. Hux slid it out, set it up, placed his hand on the planchette, trying to keep it from trembling so hard.

"Aula," he whispered, not wanting to raise his voice in the hushed dimness. "Are you here?"

The planchette moved without hesitation.

YES

His heart leapt.

"Were you listening last night?" he asked.

I KNEW YOU'D REMEMBER. Then the planchette went back to the YES.

He let out a long sigh, feeling slightly guilty but mostly elated that he was here talking to her, alone, Ren wasn't trying to convince him ghosts were real or anything--this was really happening--she wanted to talk to him, still.

"I think I lost a lot along the way," he went on. "I mean, I definitely did. But Sylen got me back here and I guess she helped Ren get all this...unlocked. And now it's back. I do remember it. I remember you." He smiled. "I want to see you again. I want to talk to you in person. Is Sylen with you?"

NO

"She's not? Where is she?"

The planchette was still for a good thirty seconds. It was almost like she was struggling for the right way to phrase her answer. At last it moved again, and spelled out, SHE'S WITH REN

Hux had come to accept that Ren was accepting guidance in his own witchy pursuits, and he knew she'd been a tremendous force in getting them all to this point, but he also wondered exactly what Aula meant by 'with'. Before he could think about it too hard, Aula continued.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHE CAN DO?

"I don't....I don't know about any of this supernatural stuff," he confessed. "I don't know what she's capable of. I don't know what's possible. Do you?"

SHE KNOWS HOW TO BRING ME BACK

"She does?" Hux couldn't help the way his voice rose at that. "She does? Why hasn't she--?"

THE DEAD CAN'T BRING BACK THE DEAD. ONLY THE LIVING CAN DO THAT

Hux wasn't sure if he liked the sound of that. "Can she show Ren?"

YES

Then,

AND YOU, IF YOU'D LIKE

"I don't know if I'd do it right, Aula," he said quietly. "I'm not attuned to this kind of thing the way he is. But if she can show me, I will."

SHE SAYS IT'S HARD, Aula wrote him. SHE SAYS IT'S EXHAUSTING

"I can do it," he said. "I'll ask Ren to help me--I can do it. I will."

Another brief pause, and then she spelled I LOVE YOU, not once but over and over, and he did not want to take his hand away until she was gone and so he sat there as the sun came up, smiling, staying still, refusing to leave.

 

Slowly--so slowly! But steadily, for sure, for absolute sure, Sylen had begun to come through in a way that did not require any props or other tools to speak with Ren. When she'd helped him guide Hux through the past-life regression, it had been as though she were the voice in the back of his head, not so much speaking as thinking for him in quick little helpful flashes. But her own voice, her real voice, was getting stronger, or rather, he was getting better at hearing.

She was playful, a little harsh but not really, just a sharp-tongued tease, but she loved his attention, his knowledge. He had impressed her, she told him so.

_Aren't you a fast learner? Keep going. You're getting these spells so fast--my God, this is great._

_You remind me of myself--how sensitive you are to the other side--_

_You'll be the one to bring me back, give me my body. You can do this._

_Were you digging in my private spells, the sex ones? You sneak. Let's see if you're any good at them._

At night he whispered for her to take him. She always obliged. It was like that time in the shower, her invisible presence pressing into him, gripping him, digging into his skin. Sometimes he woke up with bruises across his thighs or his shoulders, small enough to be from a woman's fingertips. He pressed into them absentmindedly, loving the tiny sting.

 _Do you trust me, Ren?_ she wanted to know the morning after they had taken Hux through his regression.

 _Yes,_ he answered in his meditations.

_I'll show you how to get us our bodies back if you let me borrow yours for a little while._

_How long is a little while?_

_However long it takes to explore all of you with your own hands._

His eyes widened at that. How could he resist an offer like that? He nodded eagerly at the suggestion.

_You have to promise to give me back..._

He could almost hear her laughing.

_Darling, I want you, but I don't want to be you always. I want to be me, and have you like that instead. But this will be so interesting._

_Go on, then._

The feeling that went across him was like that of sitting on a leg or laying on an arm and going numb, starting at his fingertips and toes and blooming up through his body until he had no capacity to move at all. He panicked for just a second, at the unfamiliarity, but she whispered for him to relax, to keep still, he was fine. As she fully took him over, tested out his limbs, it felt as though he were waking up from a heavy sleep. "Mm," she (he?) said, in his voice. "Oh, goodness, it's been awhile."

 _What do you think?_ he asked. She crossed the room, watching them in the mirror on the opposite wall, and to his fascination he saw that his gait had entirely changed--his body moving with the purposeful grace of a woman used to all eyes on her. In his black boxer shorts and grey sleeveless shirt, the effect was bizarre, and yet he kind of loved it.

"I think you're even more desirable than I'd thought already," she said in his voice, but again, it was only a vehicle that she was driving in her own style. The way he spoke was different--her way of speaking. "Look at you. God."

 _I see it every day_ , he laughed.

"You're so lucky..." she said, making his voice throaty and--fuck! She was going to make him attracted to himself? What the fuck! "Such a view. Not that I don't get to see you every day since you moved in, but..." She ran his hands down his throat, down the hard expanse of his chest. "No use hesitating," she said. "I'd like to get your body back to you sooner rather than later, and I'm sure this teasing..." She pulled off the grey shirt. "Is hard on both of us."

He couldn't speak, not even in the meditative way he'd been communicating with her, could hardly make a sound. He was utterly transfixed by the way she was holding (him? them?) in his fist, having wriggled out of his boxers with a feminine roll of the hips. They were both ferociously, painfully excited--she either could read him well enough to know exactly how to stroke him or she had given a handjob or two back under the table at a speakeasy back in the day. He heard himself moan and he wasn't sure which of them was doing it. She backed them onto the bed and laid them down, shuddering beautifully as she worked him even harder.

"Do you think Hux will hear?" she whispered, breathless, in his voice.

_God, fuck--I really don't care--I don't care, keep going, please--_

She picked up her pace. "You're so gorgeous--oh, hell, I can't wait until you can fuck me--"

They came suddenly, and she let out a high whine that he was not sure he had ever made before but it sounded right coming from them. He felt them breathing hard and then they froze as they heard Hux knock on the door.

"Give me a minute," she said, and it didn't sound like him to his own ears but it must have sounded fine to Hux.

"Yeah, okay," Hux said from the other side of the door. "I wanted to ask you something about Sylen."

Ren felt her smile deviously as she quickly yanked his clothes back onto his body and then open the door. "What is it?"

He looked at them warily--was there any way he could know who he was really talking to? Ren had to be imagining things. "I spoke to Aula earlier," he said, quietly, as if confessing. "With the board. I reached her. She saw--last night."

"She was there. I could feel her listening."

"She said Sylen knows how to bring her back but it would...be difficult."

Sylen sighed. "Yes. It would be." This was all new information to Ren, but he realized it was her way of keeping her promise. "It's a long spell and requires a lot of energy to be...donated. From a living person. The closer the living person is or was to the dead one, the more effective it will be. If you do it, you'll feel tired and sick and like you're having fever dreams. And under no circumstances--none, none whatsoever--can the process be interrupted. But it can be done." She looked at him. "Would you do it for her?"

"Yes," Hux said, almost a whisper.

"Then we'll get started on the process today. I'm bringing Sylen back first so she can help us."

Hux nodded, drifted away--up to the attic, it sounded like--and Sylen closed the door before draining herself out of Ren's body, just as promised.

 _I know I volunteered you to do this for me first,_ she told him. _If you want to back out--_

"No. No. I'm doing it."

_I can help more in person. And--I still want you--_

"Then we will get started today. Show me what we need to do."

 

Ren explained that the ritual was started at sundown and lasted through the entire night. "If I do this right, Sylen will be back by morning," he said, though his voice faltered ever so slightly and Hux realized that he was nervous that he wouldn't do it right, that he might accidentally destroy his spirit or hurt her or hurt himself. "You have to listen to me," he went on. "You cannot open the door to my bedroom at any point. If you do, all this work is fucked. All of it. Don't do it."

"Don't lecture me," Hux said. "I understand. I'm not going to open that door."

"Not until the sun's out or until she leaves the room herself."

"I'm not going to do it." He paused. "Are you just sleeping in the hall or what?"

"On the couch. So I don't bother you if....anything happens."

"What's going to happen?" Hux asked, more than a little nervous.

Ren shrugged, trying to look casual. "I mean. I don't actually know. I just know that it's like being really sick, so I'm not planning on waking you up if I'm retching or anything."

"Oh, fantastic."

The time had come. Ren went into his room and set up all the necessary items on the bed--all the diaries from the attic, the articles, the photos (including his own favorite, a slightly blurry one of Sylen meeting a young Ernest Hemingway, his hand low on her back, nearly gripping her bottom). The person who was giving life had to be the one to arrange everything, Sylen had instructed, along with the flowers and herbs, and they had to be the one to write the letter of intention and swipe a fingerprint of their blood on it. "I feel like I'm selling my soul," Ren whispered as he cut his thumb with the blade of his Swiss army knife and pressed it into the letter he'd written her. My teacher, my friend, my lover. Please come back, I want to thank you properly. I'm giving you permission to borrow from me, sealed in blood...

She said nothing but he could feel the warmth of her amusement pass through him. "Good night, Sylen," he said, closing the door. "I'll see you in the morning."

He made his way to the couch and read for about an hour, feeling no different than he had when he'd left the room, and that had worried him. When he began to feel sleepy, warm, dizzy, it was a relief. Something's happening, at least. Hux was in his favorite chair with the cat in his lap, watching some documentary. Ren closed his book and lay back on the pillow, trying to follow along on the screen, but he could feel himself growing hotter and hotter and his feeling of relief faded. Hux glanced over and noticed how much he was sweating.

"Open the window," he told Hux softly.

"Ren, are you--?"

"Open the window," he repeated. "I'm so hot. I need--"

Hux stood, sending Mill jumping down to the floor in irritation, and opened the window to let in the brisk evening air, then walked back over to where Ren lay, kicking the blanket off him in desperation.

"Tell me what's happening to you," Hux commanded, low, but he couldn't hide his concern. I must look like fucking death already if Hux is worried, Ren thought.

"She burned, you know. Oh my god." Ren gave a wheezing laugh, even as his vision swam. "That's funny in the most awful fucking way. She was a real witch and she burned. In the hotel. In New York." He gripped Hux's arm and Hux's skin was so cold, the room was so cold but Ren was still too hot-- "It hurt her so bad--"

"If you let go of me, I'll get you a cold cloth," Hux said. "Can you do that?"

Ren's grip loosened and Hux hurried off, went to go soak a dish rag in cold water. Ren could swear he felt it steaming against him, his skin was just that hot. "Don't leave me alone during this," he pleaded, he could feel himself sounding desperate and childish but not caring at all as the heat and unsteadiness rose up through his body, it was almost like Sylen was passing through him to come back to life and all her memories, her feelings were coming with her, tearing at him...it hurt so fucking badly--

"Okay. Okay, I won't," Hux promised, sounding fairly scared himself. "I'm not gonna do that."

"I'll stay with you tomorrow night. All night. I promise."

"I'll hold you to it."

How long had he been there? He had to keep his eyes closed because moving them wracked him with dizziness. Every muscle in his body ached. "Hey, Ren," Hux said softly, hoping to distract him a little bit. Yeah, I definitely look like death. He's really worried. "Tell me what you'll do once she's back."

Ren licked his lips. "I'll thank her for making a real witch out of me. Before I came here...I was sensitive but I didn't have access to what I needed. She changed all that. God. I'll get her a real drink, it's not fucking Prohibition anymore. I'll tell her how beautiful she is. She is. Hux, what if...?" Ren shifted uncomfortably, groaning a little bit. "What if I didn't do this right?"

"She gave you good instructions. You paid attention and did them right. She said it'd hurt, right?" Hux didn't wait for a response. "And now it hurts. So you're doing fine. Just think about all the supernatural bullshit you guys can talk about all day tomorrow. It'll be great."

Ren smiled thinly. "You're still calling it bullshit?

"It's always bullshit to me, even if it's real."

Hux ended up falling asleep in his chair that night, not sleeping well, stirring every time Ren groaned or whined in pain. Sometimes Ren didn't seem sure where he was or who he was talking to. He could see memories of Sylen's seances, it seemed. He was seeing all her ghosts.

When the sky began to lighten, finally, Hux stood up and looked around. Ren seemed to be quietly asleep, though pale and drawn and soaked in sweat, shivering a little bit now after his long night spent burning. Hux quietly walked upstairs, approached Ren's bedroom door, but then hesitated. Was it too early to open the door? He could only imagine Ren's crushing disappointment if Hux ruined this ritual at the very last moment. Just before he decided it was light enough, the door creaked open from the inside and a pair of bright eyes were staring up at him.

It was jarring to see Sylen without the careful makeup she'd worn in every old photo he'd seen of her, the deep-colored lipstick and the ring of kohl that had made her eyes seem to glow. She was stark naked, standing in the doorway without concern, smiled cheekily at Hux. Unlike him, it seemed, she hadn't lost a thing in transit, she knew exactly where she was and who she was talking to.

"You got a smoke?" she wanted to know.

"Don't you want any clothes?" was all he could think to answer.

She laughed. "I'll steal something from Ren's closet. Go bring him to me."

He'd already headed down the stairs before it hit him that he was really taking orders from a third person in their home, a person, not a spirit but a flesh and blood woman who was now rummaging through Ren's t-shirts. "Wake up," he said, too loud, his voice shaking. "Wake up. Go upstairs."

Ren scrambled up off the couch, still weary and not looking great, but better than he'd been, that was for sure, and he knew Hux wouldn't tell him to go unless she was there. Hux followed at his heels.

Her face lit up when she saw him, frozen in the doorway, watching her lounge on his bed among the dairies and clippings, just wearing a baggy black shirt with two silhouettes of birds on it. "Look at you," she said in that low breathless way of hers, beaming. "God--"

"Look at you--"

"I knew you could--"

"I did it just how you--"

Hux knew it was time to back out of the room, seeing the way they were watching each other, wanting to admire and compliment each other but also wanting to fuck each other so badly that the air in the room seemed charged. A mild tinge of jealousy went through him, just at how happily they devoured one another the moment he left the room, how loud they were, how shameless, how happy, but it was mostly impatience for having Aula back. They spent all morning fucking, he could hear it, but in the early afternoon Sylen came downstairs just wearing the bird shirt again and smiling slyly.

"He's worn out," she explained. "I waited almost a hundred years for a fuck like that, it's no wonder I tired him. And he must not have slept very well. So now he's down for awhile." She poured herself a glass of water. "He said you were oddly kind to him last night."

"He looked like he was dying. I was concerned."

"It'll go easier on you, tonight. You'll have two people helping you instead of just one." She lowered her voice. "And she's so excited to be back."

He clung to that thought after he did the necessary actions of the ritual at sundown, nervous despite himself. He arranged the letters and flowers with meticulous care. He'd written his intentions the torn-up one she'd written the morning he died. I got this one, after all. Come back for me. Borrow what you need. Then he sealed it with a bloody finger and went downstairs to await his torture.

"He's so cold," Ren said, maybe thinking he couldn't hear, but he was drifting just above unconsciousness, curled up tightly on the couch with the blankets around him. "I was hot as shit. Is he...?"

"You were feeling me die," Sylen said, Hux could smell her smoking the clove cigarette Ren had given her. "It's my understanding that it's colder to bring back most people. Go get him another blanket."

"You said you'd stay," Hux whispered when Ren threw it over him. "You told me last night..."

"We're not going," Ren said. "I'm not backing out on you, okay?"

Hux nodded slowly, trembling like he had a flu, hoping desperately to fall asleep, to just pass out and let this be over. "Think of how worthwhile it'll be," Sylen said.

"It probably hurt more the first time," Hux managed, and they laughed because it was so fucking true.

Dimly, much later--God, it felt like years later--he felt Ren pick him up (he'd have been irritated about it, Ren showing off how goddamn strong he was, but he was too exhausted now, he wasn't sure if he'd slept at all because the aching and cold and tightness in his body had prevented it, it had hurt) and he let his head roll helplessly as he was carried upstairs.

"I think she's still sleeping too," he heard Sylen whisper. Ren set Hux down in the bed, Hux's head still swimming and he was still so cold but there was someone next to him, he couldn't help but reach out for her as he settled back down into sleep, and it didn't even occur to him as strange that Aula would be beside him, curling up into him, alive and there, so warm, her hands in his hair as she pulled him close. When he woke up it would hit him for real and he could react--he could pull her into a kiss, or cry, or laugh, or anything--but for now he just wanted to sleep in her arms, feel her breath on his neck.


End file.
